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When do you start Greek?


kristinannie
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I am planning on starting Latin in 2nd or 3rd grade depending on where my kids are academically. I absolutely love the looks of First Form Greek, et al on Memoria Press' site, but I haven't been able to find anything that starts before high school. I really want to do classical Greek and not Koine Greek. Is it easy to switch from Koine to Classical later on? I would ideally like to start Greek around 4th-6th grade. Thanks!

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Have you thought of a high-school program like Athenaze or A Reading Course in Homeric Greek? I know people slow down and adapt Wheelcocks or Lingua Latina for Latin - as low as 5th grade, I'd love to figure out how to do that for Greek.

 

It's "easiest" to go forward in Greek. So Homeric -> Attic / Classical; or Classical -> Koine. But it's still going to be easier to learn classical Greek if you have experience in Koine than it would be starting from scratch.

 

Are you going to learn (or have you already learned!) Greek before your kids, or will you learn with them? I want to be a ways ahead of them.

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My DD wanted to start Greek as soon as she discovered it existed, so we started with Song School Greek and Greek Code Cracker, Biblical Greek 4 Kids, and a couple of books of Hey, Andrew. She is really enjoying Cambridge Latin (tweaked), so I plan to try Athenaze with her next year and see how it goes, since it's a similar approach. I know CL isn't the most rigorous or grammatically exact Latin program (not sure how Athenaze stands up as far as Greek goes-there are so few Greek programs out there compared to Latin ones), but I figure we have time for her to do something more rigorous in one or both languages when she's actually a high school student, and that doing "Classical languages-lite" now won't hurt her and will let her follow her interests.

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We start Latin in 3rd grade and Greek in 5th. We start out 5th with Elementary Greek. I am going to consider First Form Greek when the series is completed. After that I plan to enroll them in the Greek course at The Potters School for High School, by then it should be a breeze for them.

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Have you thought of a high-school program like Athenaze or A Reading Course in Homeric Greek? I know people slow down and adapt Wheelcocks or Lingua Latina for Latin - as low as 5th grade, I'd love to figure out how to do that for Greek.

 

It's "easiest" to go forward in Greek. So Homeric -> Attic / Classical; or Classical -> Koine. But it's still going to be easier to learn classical Greek if you have experience in Koine than it would be starting from scratch.

 

Are you going to learn (or have you already learned!) Greek before your kids, or will you learn with them? I want to be a ways ahead of them.

 

 

I will definitely be ahead of them in Greek. I am learning Latin now to get ready for 2nd grade. :) I love your idea of slowing down a high school course. I have seen people have success with that using Henle for Latin. I will have to look into that. If you try it, please let me know!

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We did Code Cracker and are now doing Song School Greek because dd saw the program advertised at the front of her Latin for Children book. I was hesitant to start because I thought it would be difficult to do both. It is difficult for me but she doesn't seem to have a problem with it:lol:

 

It's good for keeping me humble because she generally knows the answer before I do. Song School Greek can be done in 1st or 2nd. There is a local Classical University model school that does it with that age and then starts Latin in 3rd.

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What age do you think someone could start this?

 

Used independently, I think you are looking at middle-school at least. If the parent guides the study and adapts as necessary then you can use it at an earlier age. I adapted a college foreign language program for my kids to use as young as Kindergarten. They didn't read the book. I did and I made the learning more age-appropriate and we went through the content at a much slower pace. This blog post is an example of how I adapted a curriculum designed for college for my children who were in K and 2nd grade.

 

I have a diligent 4th grader and he can do Athenaze on his own if I get him started and show him what to do. Today, for instance, I went over the verbs with him helping him find ways to remember them. Then he studied the verbs and other vocabulary words using an online flashcard website. I wouldn't use Athenaze or even adapt it until the child is a fluent reader of chapter books with smaller print since Athenaze requires a bit of reading.

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